Hezekiah in History and Tradition


Book Description

This study draws upon the biblical books of Kings, First Isaiah and Chronicles, in conjunction with Assyrian records and ancient Near Eastern archaeology, in order to provide an updated historical reconstruction of the influential Judean monarch Hezekiah.




Of Fire and Lions


Book Description

The Old Testament book of Daniel comes to life in this novel for readers of Lynn Austin's Chronicles of the Kings series or Francine Rivers' Mark of the Lion series. FINALIST FOR THE CHRISTY AWARD® Survival. A Hebrew girl first tasted it when she escaped death nearly seventy years ago as the Babylonians ransacked Jerusalem and took their finest as captives. She thought she'd perfected in the many years amongst the Magoi and the idol worshippers, pretending with all the others in King Nebuchadnezzar's court. Now, as Daniel's wife and a septuagenarian matriarch, Belili thinks she's safe and she can live out her days in Babylon without fear--until the night Daniel is escorted to Belshazzar's palace to interpret mysterious handwriting on a wall. The Persian Army invades, and Bellili's tightly-wound secrets unfurl with the arrival of the conquering army. What will the reign of Darius mean for Daniel, a man who prays to Yahweh alone? Ultimately, Yahweh's sovereign hand guides Jerusalem's captives, and the frightened Hebrew girl is transformed into a confident woman, who realizes her need of the God who conquers both fire and lions.




The Politics of God and the Politics of Man


Book Description

Man's freedom--God's omnipotence: how can they be reconciled? That question is central to this penetrating study of political action and the prophetic function. Ellul's answer to that question, though based on events recorded in the Second Book of Kings, is immediately relevant to contemporary issues and to the church today. Emerging from these reflections is an eloquent testimony to the immense love of God--"which not only creates and saves, but which also in its incomprehensible humility wants to associate man with its work."




Zion, City of Our God


Book Description

For three thousand years Jerusalem has held a special place in the hearts of Jews and Christians. More than any other site in the Bible, Jerusalem signifies God's judgment and hope. It is the focus of much of the Old Testament, and acquaintance with this background is essential for understanding the importance of the city in Jesus' time, in our own age, and in the prophecies of the world to come.




The Invasion of Sennacherib in the Book of Kings


Book Description

The invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE is a classic issue for both biblical scholars and historians alike. Extant Assyrian, Biblical and even Greek texts all refer to Sennacherib and many different theories have been put forward in attempts to understand the relationship between these various accounts. Despite the rise of new literary-rhetorical criticism in biblical studies, studies tackling the problem of Sennacherib s invasion have been dominated by historical-critical work on the issue and have virtually ignored rhetorical methodology. Against this trend, this book employs both traditional historical-critical methods and newer rhetorical methods in an effort to utilize the biblical texts in a historical reconstruction of this famous Assyrian assault on ancient Judah.




Ecclesiastes


Book Description

The publication of the King James version of the Bible, translated between 1603 and 1611, coincided with an extraordinary flowering of English literature and is universally acknowledged as the greatest influence on English-language literature in history. Now, world-class literary writers introduce the book of the King James Bible in a series of beautifully designed, small-format volumes. The introducers' passionate, provocative, and personal engagements with the spirituality and the language of the text make the Bible come alive as a stunning work of literature and remind us of its overwhelming contemporary relevance.




David and Solomon


Book Description

The exciting field of biblical archaeology has revolutionized our understanding of the Bible -- and no one has done more to popularise this vast store of knowledge than Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, who revealed what we now know about when and why the Bible was first written in The Bible Unearthed. Now, with David and Solomon, they do nothing less than help us to understand the sacred kings and founding fathers of western civilization. David and his son Solomon are famous in the Bible for their warrior prowess, legendary loves, wisdom, poetry, conquests, and ambitious building programmes. Yet thanks to archaeology's astonishing finds, we now know that most of these stories are myths. Finkelstein and Silberman show us that the historical David was a bandit leader in a tiny back-water called Jerusalem, and how -- through wars, conquests and epic tragedies like the exile of the Jews in the centuries before Christ and the later Roman conquest -- David and his successor were reshaped into mighty kings and even messiahs, symbols of hope to Jews and Christians alike in times of strife and despair and models for the great kings of Europe. A landmark work of research and lucid scholarship by two brilliant luminaries, David and Solomon recasts the very genesis of western history in a whole new light.




The Bible's Many Voices


Book Description

The most common English translations of the Bible often sound like a single, somewhat archaic voice. In fact, the Bible is made up of many separate books composed by multiple writers in a wide range of styles and perspectives. It is, as Michael Carasik demonstrates, not a remote text reserved for churches and synagogues but rather a human document full of history, poetry, politics, theology, and spirituality. Using historic, linguistic, anthropological, and theological sources, Carasik helps us distinguish between the Jewish Bible’s voices—the mythic, the historical, the prophetic, the theological, and the legal. By articulating the differences among these voices, he shows us not just their messages and meanings but also what mattered to the authors. In these contrasts we encounter the Bible anew as a living work whose many voices tell us about the world out of which the Bible grew—and the world that it created. Listen to the author's podcast.




Hosea


Book Description

In this commentary Old Testament scholar Bo Lim and theologian Daniel Castelo work together to help the church recover, read, and proclaim the prophetic book of Hosea in a way that is both faithful to its message and relevant to our contemporary context. Though the book of Hosea is rich with imagery and metaphor that can be difficult to interpret, Lim and Castelo show that, with its focus on corporate and structural sin, Hosea contains a critically important message for today’s church.




How the Bible Became a Book


Book Description

For the past two hundred years biblical scholars have increasingly assumed that the Hebrew Bible was largely written and edited in the Persian and Hellenistic periods. As a result, the written Bible has dwelled in an historical vacuum. Recent archaeological evidence and insights from linguistic anthropology, however, point to the earlier era of the late-Iron Age as the formative period for the writing of biblical literature. How the Bible Became a Book combines these recent archaeological discoveries in the Middle East with insights culled from the history of writing to address how the Bible first came to be written down and then became sacred Scripture. This book provides rich insight into why these texts came to have authority as Scripture and explores why Ancient Israel, an oral culture, began to write literature, challenging the assertion that widespread literacy first arose in Greece during the fifth century BCE.